1) Creating a XML string by hand can become cumbersome, if XML is
huge. Maintaining the correct parent child relationship for a huge
document can be difficult, if done by hand (imagine a document of size
50 MB). This would lead to difficult debugging. Using a DOM API can do
this inherently in memory.
Program logic can overcome the "by-hand" issue.
2) It's difficult to remember correct XML name conventions if done by hand.
for e.g., <9abc> is an invalid XML name (because it starts with a number).
There are more rules for XML names.
Using DOM API does this automatically.
I guess this depends entirely on experience of the developer in regards to XML.
3) Using DOM API can check well-formedness of entities (like, &abc;
etc). Doing this by hand in a string can become difficult.
This certainly is a major benefit; like a interpretted language you get to see where you go wrong as you're constructing the DOM object.
